


A Cover Worth Blowing

by peterplanet



Category: Spider-Man: Homecoming
Genre: Angst, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-28
Updated: 2019-04-28
Packaged: 2020-02-08 14:39:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,070
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18625300
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/peterplanet/pseuds/peterplanet
Summary: in which peter decides that she’s worth the repercussions





	A Cover Worth Blowing

Among the many things that Peter Parker was, (Y/N) marked the fact that he was her best friend to be the most important. Sure, he was smart and funny and cute and one of the smartest people at Midtown, but if he wasn’t her best friend then he’d just be Peter Parker and that was like taking (in Peter’s words), “the  _fun_ out of  _function.”_ They had known each other beyond the years of crowded high-school corridors and panicked test-taking. They had grown up together and learned the intricacies of the other’s heart until Peter could read her PMS better than she could and she could quiet his anxiety better than she could memorize facts for a test if it meant that she was studying with him.

But with knowing someone so intimately, especially someone who is as easily read as Peter Parker, comes the heartbreak of understanding when they become uninterested with you. With knowing Peter came the slow realization that he no longer found time for their movie dates every Friday night to destress from school and forget about being a teenager for the span of two hours in the comfort of her basement. She would give anything to have him back like that once more even if it spelled disaster for the romantic feelings that she had been harboring for him over the span of these past years.

And she could lie and say that she didn’t know where the shift happened; she could say so easily that it had just been a change in personalities and time that drove them apart. She could say it so well and so fluently that it almost made her fall for it because it was so much easier to accept the lie than face the truth because, underneath it all, she  _knew_ that it had all began with the Stark Internship.

Peter was needed on Friday nights first and (Y/N) understood because she always did. If he asked her to understand something, she would, and that’s why she always performed so much better on the tests that she had studied for with Peter. But it wasn’t just the Stark Internship that had driven him away from her because that would be so  _easy_ to fix that it made her sick to think about.

When Peter had started talking about Liz Allen, (Y/N) hadn’t been able to stomach it anymore. She didn’t say anything and she supported him because she loved him, God damnit, and Peter and his analytical brain would deny this but she knew that love was one of the most powerful human forces that could make someone take on the world or be reckless and stupid. She supposed that she fell somewhere in the middle.

And it hurt to hear him talk about Liz because she wanted him so badly that it made her heart ache and maybe taking a break would be good for them. Maybe finding time to rest would resolve her issues and release her to the idea of being  _just friends_ with Peter because yes, she wanted him as a boyfriend but she wasn’t stupid enough to demand the impossible. She loved him too much to lose him because he found someone better than her—smarter than her—to spend time with and to dote on. And she couldn’t be mad because the human heart doesn’t choose to love or to hurt when the boy you like looks at another girl like she’s made of porcelain and just one heavy stare will make her crack under pressure. The human heart doesn’t choose when to ask the brain why that isn’t you, and the human brain doesn’t decide when to tell the truth and when to lie.

She just wishes, sometimes, that her brain had found a reason to lie.

* * *

It’s a Monday afternoon when everything goes to shit. Peter had offered to take her out for ice cream after school because they hadn’t seen each other in so long (but maybe that was the plan) and he had looked so  _eager_ that she had said yes because  _fuck it_ she loved him too much to say no. Maybe she would be stuck in her unrequited pining forever, but if it meant that she was going to be able to have her best friend back then it might just be worth the pain.

But Peter doesn’t show because  _of course_ he doesn’t. She knows that he probably got caught up talking to Liz after school or was called into his internship, but she just wishes that he would have at least had the common courtesy to call her.

So, she takes the initiative and calls him. She lets it ring once, twice, three times, before the tears start to fall. They had planned to meet at the ice-cream shop next to Delmar’s and he had been so  _excited_ that she doesn’t understand why he stood her up like this. They were supposed to be best-friends, but maybe their time without each other had driven them further apart than either of them had ever intended.

 _“Hey, it’s Peter!”_ Comes his cheery voice-mail and it’s this that makes her tears fall faster and hotter than they had been previously. She’s eliciting quite a few concerned stares and it makes her stomach churn to the point that she thinks that she might vomit as she goes into the alley before climbing up the fire-escape of the abandoned apartment building next to the ice-cream parlor. She needs to be alone and she needs to be that way  _fast_ before she vomits the contents of a well-planned ice-cream cone that she hadn’t even eaten because if she does that will mean that Peter really  _isn’t_ coming and she’s just been made a fool of in his name once again.

 _“Leave a message and I’ll get back to you—uh, sorry that I missed your call. Did I say that? Can I redo this?”_ It’s the dorky message that she had laughed at while he recorded in the excitement of getting a new phone and it makes her sick to her stomach to think of how close they had once been and that he still hadn’t changed it to this day.

“Peter,” she manages in a tiny voice that tremors ever-so-slightly under the weight of her own breath, “it’s, uh, it’s (Y/N). I was, uhm, fuck.”

She pauses to choke back a sob as she shakes her head to give herself the strength to continue on with the message that might very well define their entire relationship over the rest of their lives. And maybe she’s being melodramatic but she loves him too much to think of continuing on in a relationship that’s one-sided and that hurts her more than it will come to help her.

“I was just calling to tell you that I sat at the ice-cream parlor next to Delmar’s for thirty minutes before I decided that I wasn’t going to wait any longer. I don’t know why you couldn’t come, Peter, but I…I just hope that it was worth it.”

And with that, she ends the call and sits down on the roof of a building that’s too far up and makes her head spin with feelings in her gut that make her stomach churn and allows herself to cry.

* * *

Peter was on his way to get ice-cream, he really was. If anyone would ever ask him, then he would swear up and down that he had never had any other intentions than to go get ice cream with (Y/N) that afternoon and talk to her about everything and nothing and all of the spaces in between. But then he had seen a robbery at a corner-store and he couldn’t let it slide just because he was going to have ice cream with his best friend whom he hadn’t seen in a few weeks outside the confines of school. That’s not what Spider-Man would do, right? So why would Peter even think about letting it slide and ruining his alter-ego’s reputation through the streets of Queens?

And by the time that Peter had finished with the crime-scene and making sure that everyone who was victimized by it was okay, he had already missed the four o’clock appointment by forty-five minutes. So, of course his first instinct was to reach for his phone to call (Y/N) because he felt  _so bad_  and he knew that she’d be pissed at him but he had to try and explain himself—or lie to cover it all up, anyway—when he realized that he had already missed a call from him. They think too much alike, he reasons, and comes to the understanding that she’s too intuitive and knows his every move before he even makes it. It’s this thought that drives him to the question of whether or not she had already known that he was going to blow her off.

His heart breaks with every choked-back sob that she takes and he takes a moment to revel in the idea that he has gone  _beyond_ blowing her off one time. He has blown her off for what he has considered to be bigger and more important than the feelings he had harbored for her and their friendship; Peter has kept her in the dark for too long to see how damaging it’s been to his best friend.

When the message ends, Peter’s on the verge of tears because he doesn’t know how he’s going to fix this without blowing his cover. And that’s when he wonders if she’s been worth telling all along.

* * *

To kill time and blow off some steam, Peter finds himself swinging through his city of Queens. He’s grunting with every move and ignoring the pleased cries of the people down below that are so excited see him live and in action because he doesn’t want to believe that he’s a hero anymore or that he was ever bit by that spider. He’s so frustrated with himself for being so  _stupid_ and letting one of his most important relationships slip through the cracks just because he was so concerned with his so-called “internship” and Liz Allen. He can’t believe that he was so blind as to ignore his feelings that he’d been harboring for his best friend all along and that he had to lose her to finally understand how much she’d meant to him.

Peter is so busy swinging and attempting to destress and think of a possible solution to this impossible situation that he almost doesn’t hear muffled cries from a rooftop that he swings by. But he does, of course, because his so-called “spidey-senses” are heightened to the point that the sobs are screams that he can’t ignore. Peter Parker might be frustrated, but Spider-Man is never too frustrated or caught up in his own emotions to ignore someone in distress.

So, it goes without saying that he stops to sit on the building’s ledge while he faces the girl. She has (h/c) hair that hangs in front of her knees that she’s hugging to her chest and it catches Peter off guard how much she resembles (Y/N) from this angle. But it can’t be her because she went home, right? He stood her up, so she went home because she was mad and now they’re never going to speak again because that’s how it’s going to work because that’s what his anxiety told him.

But then she looks up to scream at the masked stranger—who isn’t really a stranger when you step back to think about it—and Peter realizes that it  _is_ (Y/N). She breathes heavily as her eyes glisten with tears and a cynical laugh tumbles past her lips.

“Of  _course,_ fucking Spider-Man shows up when I look my worst,” she retorts with another laugh just as bitter as the last, “because that’s just how my day’s going, yeah?”

Peter is startled to hear her voice and feels his heart drop when he realizes that he can’t apologize because she doesn’t know. He wants so badly to blow his cover if it means that he can hug her and apologize to her and it takes all of his strength to stop himself from taking off his mask, but that doesn’t mean his fingertips stop itching to do just that. He feels restless and antsy with this new wall of disguise put up between him and his best-friend—who doesn’t know that her (ex?) best-friend is sitting right in front of her—and he lets out a soft sigh at the thought.

“Well, how’s your day been going then?” He asks smoothly as though he’d never met her before with a tone equivalent to that of a disinterested relative at Thanksgiving dinner.

“Listen, Spider-Man, it’s cool that you’re here because you were concerned but I don’t want you to think that you have to make it part of your paygrade to listen to a teenage girl cry because she’s hopelessly in love with her best friend who doesn’t even think of her as a friend anymore,” she spills in such a rush that it sends a few of her tears slipping past her defense.

“Well,” Peter begins in a tone much softer than it was before, “considering that you’re one of the few people with enough courtesy to call me  _Spider-Man_ and not just  _Spidey,_ I think that I can make room in my paygrade for your troubles.” He smiles under the mask, although she can’t see it, and moves so that he can sit next to her. Their knees almost touch and he tries to forget about the fact that she said that she was in love with him—Peter—and that he hadn’t been wise enough to notice that before.

“I mean,” (Y/N) begins quietly as she wipes a few of her tears away and lets out a hollow laugh that he considers a step-up from her cynical one, “he asked me out to get ice-cream and left me hanging—sorry, is that insensitive?”

Peter can’t help the laugh that spills from his laugh and revels in the sound of her giggles as she moves so her head can rest on his shoulder while she goes on.

“Sorry, uhm, I mean that he stood me up. I-I don’t know where he was or what happened between lunch and four o’clock this afternoon, but…I just wish he would have called. I could have forgiven him if he had just  _called_ and maybe that makes me pathetic because I’d give him everything if he just called, but…I’d do anything for him, you know? And if he just would have called and even  _lied_ to me, I could have just…lived with it. I could have accepted anything that he told me, yeah?” She sighs and shakes her head. “I’d accept anything if it was him that was saying it.”

There’s a moment’s silence before he spares a glance down at (Y/N) to say, “I mean, I’m sure that he felt bad somewhere in that thick brain of his.”

It’s this comment that makes (Y/N) laugh harder than she has in the past few days. She looks up at him with a certain affection that makes Peter wish that she understood that it was  _him_ underneath the mask and not some stranger that she had never met before.

“You’re a really great listener,” she concedes with a soft sort of reverence that spills so easily from her lips that it makes him smile under the mask, “and I appreciate everything that you’re doing for me right now, Spider-Man. Thank you.” She sits up a bit to press a kiss to his cheek.

It’s then that Peter’s heart goes hay-wire and he looks down at her with dangerous ideas sprinting through his mind and he makes the impulsive decision to ask, “Can you keep a secret?”

And it’s in her eyes that he sees that she’s agreeing to whatever he’s about to do. It’s a danger that he takes with the risk of her (e/c) gaze focused so intently on his as she murmurs, “If you can keep mine, I’ll keep whatever you need me to.”

And it’s then that Peter’s hands go to peel the mask off of his face and he’s looking at her, no longer as Spider-Man, but as Peter Parker. And it’s in her laugh and the disbelieving shake of her head that Peter knows that she was worth blowing his cover for.

“Of  _fucking_ course, this is how today goes,” she laughs as she moves away from him to run a hand over her face in a disbelieving way that makes him a little bit dizzy because she’s adorable, even when she’s mad and frustrated. “Just another Monday I guess, huh, Parker?”

But maybe Peter’s bad at reading her emotions because then her lips are on his so gentle that he thinks he might break because he never told her that he loved her, too. But maybe it was all in his eyes and the way that he looked at her like she was made of porcelain in that moment like she had always caught him looking at Liz. Maybe it was his dorky, bashful smile; or maybe it was just because she loved him too much to pass up another moment without her lips on his.

“And here I thought that you liked Liz,” (Y/N) sighs when they pull away so that her forehead was against his and they were drinking in each other’s air and love-struck stares, “but that kiss we just had tells me otherwise.”

Peter kisses her again so that he can buy himself some time to think of a response because he wants so badly to make this moment last forever, even if the kiss is awkward and their teeth are clashing because neither of them really know what they’re doing. And it’s when he pulls away that he realizes how wrong they both had it all along when they were both so oblivious to the other’s feelings and how blunt they had to be about their situations to get the point across.

“I did, too,” he admits with a bashful smile to her sweltering stare, “but she was never worth blowing my cover for.”


End file.
